The Mammoth Book of Best Short SF Novels

by Gardner R. Dozois

  Anthony, I and a place of bad smells have found one another, but this has not deterred our hunger.

  The computer played back the message as it displayed the translation, and Anthony could understand more context from the sound of the original speech: that Two Notches was floating in a cold layer beneath the bad smell, and that the bad smell was methane or something like it – humans couldn’t smell methane, but whales could. The overliteral translation was an aid only, to remind Anthony of idioms he might have forgotten.

  Anthony’s name in humpback was actually He Who Has Brought Us to the Sea of Rich Strangeness, but the computer translated it simply. Anthony tapped his reply.

  What is it that stinks, Two Notches?

  Some kind of horrid jellyfish. Were they-and-I feeding, they-and-I would spit one another out. I/They will give them/me a name: they/me are the jellyfish that smell like indigestion.

  That is a good name, Two Notches.

  I and a small boat discovered each other earlier today. We itched, so we scratched our back on the boat. The humans and I were startled. We had a good laugh together in spite of our hunger.

  Meaning that Two Notches had risen under the boat, scratched his back on it, and terrified the passengers witless. Anthony remembered the first time this had happened to him back on Earth, a vast female humpback rising up without warning, one long scalloped fin breaking the water to port, the rest of the whale to starboard, thrashing in cetacean delight as it rubbed itself against a boat half its length. Anthony had clung to the gunwale, horrified by what the whale could do to his boat, but still exhilarated, delighted at the sight of the creature and its glorious joy.

  Still, Two Notches ought not to play too many pranks on the tourists.

  We should be careful, Two Notches. Not all humans possess our sense of humor, especially if they are hungry.

  We were bored, Anthony. Mating is over, feeding has not begun. Also, it was Nick’s boat that got scratched. In our opinion Nick and I enjoyed ourselves, even though we were hungry.

  Hunger and food seemed to be the humpback subtheme of the day. Humpback songs, like the human, were made up of text and chorus, the chorus repeating itself, with variations, through the message.

  I and Nick will ask each other and find out, as we feed.

  Anthony tried to participate in the chorus/response about food, but he found himself continually frustrated at his clumsy phrasing. Fortunately the whales were tolerant of his efforts.

  Have we learned anything about the ones that swim deep and do not breathe and feed on obscure things?

  Not yet, Two Notches. Something has interrupted us in our hungry quest.

  A condition of misfortune exists, like unto hunger. We must learn to be quicker.

  We will try, Two Notches. After we eat.

  We would like to speak to the Deep Dwellers now, and feed with them, but we must breathe.

  We will speak to ourselves another time, after feeding.

  We are in a condition of hunger, Anthony. We must eat soon.

  We will remember our hunger and make plans.

  The mating and calving season for the humpbacks was over. Most of the whales were already heading north to their summer feeding grounds, where they would do little but eat for six months. Two Notches and one of the other males had remained in the vicinity of Las Madres as a favor to Anthony, who used them to assist in locating the Deep Dwellers, but soon – in a matter of days – the pair would have to head north. They hadn’t eaten anything for nearly half a year; Anthony didn’t want to starve them.

  But when the whales left, Anthony would be alone – again – with the Deep Dwellers. He didn’t want to think about that.

  The system’s second sun winked across the waves, rising now. It was a white dwarf and emitted dangerous amounts of X-rays. The boat’s falkner generator, triggered by the computer, snapped on a field that surrounded the boat and guarded it from energetic radiation. Anthony felt the warmth on his shoulders decrease. He turned his attention back to the Deep Dwellers.

  A blaze of delight rose in Anthony. The Dwellers, he realized, had overheard his conversation with Two Notches, and were commenting on it. Furthermore, he knew, A9140 probably was a verb form having to do with hearing – the Dwellers had a lot of them. “I/You hear the shrill sounds from above” might do as a working translation, and although he had no idea how to translate C22, he suspected it was a comment on the sounds. In a fever, Anthony began to work. As he bent over his keys he heard, through water and bone, the sound of Two Notches singing.

  The Milky Way was a dim watercolor wash overhead. An odd twilight hung over Las Madres, a near-darkness that marked the hours when only the dwarf star was in the sky, providing little visible light but still pouring out X-rays. Cabo Santa Pola lay in a bright glowing crescent across the boat’s path. Music drifted from a waterfront tavern, providing a counterpoint to the Deep Dweller speech that still rang in Anthony’s head. A familiar figure waited on the dock, standing beneath the yellow lamp that marked Anthony’s slip. Anthony waved and throttled the boat back.

  A good day. Even after the yellow sun had set, Anthony still felt in a sunny mood. A9140 had been codified as “listen(14),” meaning listen solely in the sense of listening to a sound that originated from far outside the Dwellers’ normal sphere – from outside their entire universe, in fact, which spoke volumes for the way the Dwellers saw themselves in relation to their world. They knew something else was up there, and their speech could make careful distinction between the world they knew and could perceive directly and the one they didn’t. C22 was a descriptive term involving patterning: the Dwellers realized that the cetacean speech they’d been hearing wasn’t simply random. Which spoke rather well for their cognition.

  Anthony turned the boat and backed into the slip. Nick Kanellopoulos, whom the humpbacks called The One Who Chases Bad-Tasting Fish, took the sternline that Anthony threw him and tied it expertly to a cleat. Anthony shut off the engines, took a bowline, and hopped to the dock. He bent over the cleat and made his knot.

  “You’ve gotta stop beating up my customers, Anthony,” Nick said.

  Anthony said nothing.

  “You even send your damn whales to harass me.”

  Anthony jumped back into the boat and stepped into the cabin for a small canvas bag that held his gear and the data cubes containing the Dwellers’ conversation. When he stepped back out of the cabin, he saw Nick standing on one foot, the other poised to step into the boat. Anthony gave Nick a look and Nick pulled his foot back. Anthony smiled. He didn’t like people on his boat.

  “Dinner?” he asked.

  Nick gazed at him. A muscle moved in the man’s cheek. He was dapper, olive-skinned, about a century old, the second-youngest human on the planet. He looked in his late teens. He wore a personal falkner generator on his belt that protected him from the dwarf’s X-rays.

  “Dinner. Fine.” His brown eyes were concerned. “You look like hell, Anthony.”

  Anthony rubbed the stubble on his cheeks. “I feel on top of the world,” he said.

  “Half the time you don’t even talk to me. I don’t know why I’m eating supper with you.”

  “Let me clean up. Then we can go to the Villa Mary.”

  Nick shook his head. “Okay,” he said. “But you’re buying. You cost me a customer last night.”

  Anthony slapped him on the shoulder. “Least I can do, I guess.”

  A good day.

  Near midnight. Winds beat at the island’s old volcanic cone, pushed down the crowns of trees. A shuttle, black against the darkness of the sky, rose in absolute silence from the port on the other side of the island, heading toward the bright fixed star that was Overlook Station. The alien, Telamon, was aboard, or so the newscasts reported.

  Deep Dwellers still sang in Anthony’s head. Mail in hand, he let himself in through the marina gate and walked toward his slip. The smell of the sea rose around him. He stretched, yawned. Belched up a bit of the tequila he�
�d been drinking with Nick. He intended to get an early start and head back to sea before dawn.

  Anthony paused beneath a light and opened the large envelope, pulled out page proofs that had been mailed, at a high cost, from the offices of the Xenobiology Review on Kemps. Discontent scratched at his nerves. He frowned as he glanced through the pages. He’d written the article over a year before, at the end of the first spring he’d spent here, and just glancing through it he now found the article overtentative, overformal, and, worse, almost pleading in its attempt to justify his decision to move himself and the whales here. The palpable defensiveness made him want to squirm.

  Disgust filled him. His fingers clutched at the pages, then tore the proofs across. His body spun full circle as he scaled the proofs out to the sea. The wind scattered thick chunks of paper across the dark waters of the marina.

  He stalked toward his boat. Bile rose in his throat. He wished he had a bottle of tequila with him. He almost went back for one before he realized the liquor stores were closed.

  “Anthony Maldalena?”

  She was a little gawky, and her skin was pale. Dark hair in a single long braid, deep eyes, a bit of an overbite. She was waiting for him at the end of his slip, under the light. She had a bag over one shoulder.

  Anthony stopped. Dull anger flickered in his belly. He didn’t want anyone taking notice of the bruises and cuts on his face. He turned his head away as he stepped into his boat, dropped his bag on a seat.

  “Mr. Maldalena. My name is Philana Telander. I came here to see you.”

  “How’d you get in?”

  She gestured to the boat two slips down, a tall FPS-powered yacht shaped like a flat oval with a tall flybridge jutting from its center so that the pilot could see over wavetops. It would fly from place to place, but she could put it down in the water if she wanted. No doubt she’d bought a temporary membership at the yacht club.

  “Nice boat,” said Anthony. It would have cost her a fair bit to have it gated here. He opened the hatch to his forward cabin, tossed his bag onto the long couch inside.

  “I meant,” she said, “I came to this planet to see you.”

  Anthony didn’t say anything, just straightened from his stoop by the hatch and looked at her. She shifted from one foot to another. Her skin was yellow in the light of the lamp. She reached into her bag and fumbled with something.

  Anthony waited.

  The clicks and sobs of whales sounded from the recorder in her hand.

  “I wanted to show you what I’ve been able to do with your work. I have some articles coming up in Cetology Journal but they won’t be out for a while.”

  “You’ve done very well,” said Anthony. Tequila swirled in his head. He was having a hard time concentrating on a subject as difficult as whale speech.

  Philana had specialized in communication with female humpbacks. It was harder to talk with the females: although they were curious and playful, they weren’t vocal like the bulls; their language was deeper, briefer, more personal. They made no songs. It was almost as if, solely in the realm of speech, the cows were autistic. Their psychology was different and complicated, and Anthony had had little success in establishing any lasting communication. The cows, he had realized, were speaking a second tongue: the humpbacks were essentially bilingual, and Anthony had only learned one of their languages.

  Philana had succeeded where Anthony had found only frustration. She had built from his work, established a structure and basis for communication. She still wasn’t as easy in her speech with the cows as Anthony was with a bull like Two Notches, but she was far closer than Anthony had ever been.

  Steam rose from the coffee cup in Philana’s hand as she poured from Anthony’s vacuum flask. She and Anthony sat on the cushioned benches in the stern of Anthony’s boat. Tequila still buzzed in Anthony’s head. Conflicting urges warred in him. He didn’t want anyone else here, on his boat, this close to his work; but Philana’s discoveries were too interesting to shut her out entirely. He swallowed more coffee.

  “Listen to this,” Philana said. “It’s fascinating. A cow teaching her calf about life.” She touched the recorder, and muttering filled the air. Anthony had difficulty understanding: the cow’s idiom was complex, and bore none of the poetic repetition that made the males’ language easier to follow. Finally he shook his head.

  “Go ahead and turn it off,” he said. “I’m picking up only one phrase in five. I can’t follow it.”

  Philana seemed startled. “Oh. I’m sorry. I thought—”

  Anthony twisted uncomfortably in his seat. “I don’t know every goddamn thing about whales,” he said.

  The recorder fell silent. Wind rattled the canvas awning over the flybridge. Savage discontent settled into Anthony’s mind. Suddenly he needed to get rid of this woman, get her off his boat and head to sea right now, away from all the things on land that could trip him up.

  He thought of his father upside down in the smokehouse. Not moving, arms dangling.

  He should apologize, he realized. We are, he thought, in a condition of permanent apology.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m just . . . not used to dealing with people.”

  “Sometimes I wonder,” she said. “I’m only twenty-one, and . . .”

  “Yes?” Blurted suddenly, the tequila talking. Anthony felt disgust at his own awkwardness.

  Philana looked at the planks. “Yes. Truly. I’m twenty-one, and sometimes people get impatient with me for reasons I don’t understand.”

  Anthony’s voice was quiet. “I’m twenty-six.”

  Philana was surprised. “But. I thought.” She thought for a long moment. “It seems I’ve been reading your papers for . . .”

  “I was first published at twenty,” he said. “The finback article.”

  Philana shook her head. “I’d never have guessed. Particularly after what I saw in your new XR paper.”

  Anthony’s reaction was instant. “You saw that?” Another spasm of disgust touched him. Tequila burned in his veins. His stomach turned over. For some reason his arms were trembling.

  “A friend on Kemps sent me an advance copy. I thought it was brilliant. The way you were able to codify your conceptions about a race of which you could really know nothing, and have it all pan out when you began to understand them. That’s an incredible achievement.”

  “It’s a piece of crap.” Anthony wanted more tequila badly. His body was shaking. He tossed the remains of his coffee over his shoulder into the sea. “I’ve learned so much since. I’ve given up even trying to publish it. The delays are too long. Even if I put it on the nets, I’d still have to take the time to write it, and I’d rather spend my time working.”

  “I’d like to see it.”

  He turned away from her. “I don’t show my work till it’s finished.”

  “I . . . didn’t mean to intrude.”

  Apology. He could feel a knife twisting in his belly. He spoke quickly. “I’m sorry, Miss Telander. It’s late, and I’m not used to company. I’m not entirely well.” He stood, took her arm. Ignoring her surprise, he almost pulled her to her feet. “Maybe tomorrow. We’ll talk again.”

  She blinked up at him. “Yes. I’d like that.”

  “Good night.” He rushed her off the boat and stepped below to the head. He didn’t want her to hear what was going to happen next. Acid rose in his throat. He clutched his middle and bent over the small toilet and let the spasms take him. The convulsions wracked him long after he was dry. After it was over he stood shakily, staggered to the sink, washed his face. His sinuses burned and brought tears to his eyes. He threw himself on the couch.

  In the morning, before dawn, he cast off and motored out into the quiet sea.

  The other male, The One Who Sings of Others, found a pair of Dwellers engaged in a long conversation and hovered above them. His transponder led Anthony to the place, fifty miles south into the bottomless tropical ocean. The Dwellers’ conversation was dense. Anthony understood perh
aps one word-phrase in ten. Sings of Others interrupted from time to time to tell Anthony how hungry he was.

  The recordings would require days of work before Anthony could even begin to make sense of them. He wanted to stay on the site, but the Dwellers fell silent, neither Anthony nor Sings of Others could find another conversation, and Anthony was near out of supplies. He’d been working so intently he’d never got around to buying food.

  The white dwarf had set by the time Anthony motored into harbor. Dweller mutterings did a chaotic dance in his mind. He felt a twist of annoyance at the sight of Philana Telander jumping from her big air yacht to the pier. She had obviously been waiting for him.

  He threw her the bowline and she made fast. As he stepped onto the dock and fastened the sternline, he noticed sunburn reddening her cheeks. She’d spent the day on the ocean.

  “Sorry I left so early,” he said. “One of the humpbacks found some Dwellers, and their conversation sounded interesting.”

  She looked from Anthony to his boat and back. “That’s all right,” she said. “I shouldn’t have talked to you last night. Not when you were ill.”

  Anger flickered in his mind. She’d heard him being sick, then.

  “Too much to drink,” he said. He jumped back into the boat and got his gear.

  “Have you eaten?” she asked. “Somebody told me about a place called the Villa Mary.”

  He threw his bag over one shoulder. Dinner would be his penance. “I’ll show you,” he said.

  “Mary was a woman who died,” Anthony said. “One of the original Knight’s Move people. She chose to die, refused the treatments. She didn’t believe in living forever.” He looked up at the arched ceiling, the moldings on walls and ceiling, the initials ML worked into the decoration. “Brian McGivern built this place in her memory,” Anthony said. “He’s built a lot of places like this, on different worlds.”

  Philana was looking at her plate. She nudged an ichthyoid exomembrane with her fork. “I know,” she said. “I’ve been in a few of them.”